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Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognition
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.969382
This article is part of the Research Topic Implicit Social Cognition: Malleability and Change View all 8 articles

Perceived Controllability of Group Membership Does Not Moderate Individuating Information Effects in Implicit Person Perception

Provisionally accepted
Rachel S. Rubinstein Rachel S. Rubinstein 1*Lee Jussim Lee Jussim 2Brandon Mangracina Brandon Mangracina 3K. Mackenzie Shaw K. Mackenzie Shaw 3Sonia Yanovsky Sonia Yanovsky 4Samuel Bennett Samuel Bennett 5
  • 1 Towson University, Towson, United States
  • 2 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States
  • 3 Psychology, Towson University, Towson, United States
  • 4 Psychology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, United States
  • 5 Psychological & Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Although the effects of counterstereotypic individuating information (i.e., information specific to individual members of stereotyped groups that disconfirms the group stereotype) on biases in explicit person perception are well-established, research shows mixed effects of such information on implicit person perception. The present research tested the overarching hypothesis that, when social group membership is perceived to be under an individual's control, diagnostic individuating information would have lesser effects on implicit person perception than it would when social group membership is perceived not to be under an individual's control. This hypothesis was tested in the domain of implicit attitudinal and stereotype-relevant judgments of individuals who belonged to existing social groups and individuals who belonged to novel social groups. We found that individuating information consistently shifted scores on implicit measures among targets belonging to existing social groups, but not in a theoretically predicted direction among targets belonging to novel social groups. Controllability of group membership did not moderate such effects. Results of implicit and explicit measures were mostly consistent when targets belonged to existing social groups, but mostly inconsistent when targets belonged to novel social groups.

    Keywords: Implicit, stereotype, Attitude, individuation, Individuating information, controllability, Person Perception

    Received: 14 Jun 2022; Accepted: 09 Apr 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Rubinstein, Jussim, Mangracina, Shaw, Yanovsky and Bennett. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Rachel S. Rubinstein, Towson University, Towson, United States

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